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Statistics about Cultural and Racial Diversity

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09/10/2024

Australia is home to the world's oldest continuous culture as well as non-Indigenous Australians who identify with over 300 different ancestries. Migration to Australia is not a new phenomenon. In fact, Australia has a rich history of migration and trade pre-dating British colonisation.[1]

Cultural and racial diversity in Australia

  • Over 29% of Australia's population was born overseas and 48% of Australians have a parent born overseas.[2]
  • It is estimated that before British colonisation, over 250 First Nations languages and 800 dialects were in use.[3]
  • More than 1 in 5 Australians speak a language other than English at home.[4]
  • Between 2016 and 2021 the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population increased by 25%.[5]

Did you know?

  • Long before the colonisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people traded with Macassans from the Indonesian archipelago. For hundreds of years, Macassan fishermen arrived in fleets of traditional wooden praus with goods to trade in exchange for access to annual sea urchin harvests.[6]
  • Maningrida, located on Australia鈥檚 north-central coast, is one of the most linguistically diverse communities in the world. 15 languages are spoken or signed every day among only a few thousand people.[7]
  • The discovery of gold in Australia in the mid-1800s led to a significant rise in migration.
  • Between 1852 and 1860, more than 600,000 people arrived in Australia, with 81% from the UK, 10% from Europe, and 7% from China.[8]
  • After Federation in 1901, the laws that formed the basis of the White Australia Policy were used to prevent non-Europeans from settling in Australia. This resulted in a rapid decrease in overseas-born residents from almost 30% in 1894 to around 17% in 1911, reaching a low of 10% in 1947.[9]

Australian South Sea Islanders

  • Between 1863 and 1901, over 62,000 people from the Pacific Islands were kidnapped from their home countries and forced to work on privately owned sugar plantations in Queensland. Referred to as 'blackbirding', this process involved working conditions that amounted to slavery.[10]
  • In 2021, 3 in 4 of all Australian South Sea Islanders were Queenslanders.
  • 2 in 3 South Sea Islanders also identified as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.[11]

Racism and discrimination

It is important to celebrate cultural diversity in Australia, but we also need to understand the role of race in shaping society in order to challenge systemic racism. Often racism is hidden by narratives that emphasise multiculturalism and social harmony. Learn more about racism on the Commission's anti-racism campaign website.

  • Around 60% of people believe that racism is a significant problem in Australia.[12]
  • In a 2020-21 Women of Colour Australia Workplace Survey Report, 26% of respondents said that their organisation was led by a person of colour and only 7% said that their organisation was led by a woman of colour.[13]

References

  • [1] Australian Bureau of Statistics, (ABS Website, 28 June 2022).
  • [2] Australian Bureau of Statistics, (ABS Website, 26 April 2021).
  • [3] National Archives of Australia, .
  • [4] Australian Bureau of Statistics, (ABS Website, 20 September 2022).
  • [5] Australian Bureau of Statistics, (ABS Website, 4 April 2023)
  • [6] Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Cth), (June 2017)
  • [7] Jill Vaughan, (5 December 2018) The Conversation.
  • [8] The Guardian, (30 January 2023) <>.; Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Cth), (June 2017).
  • [9] Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Cth), (June 2017) <>; Emil Jeyaratnam, (28 November 2018) The Conversation.
  • [10] Ibid; Jeff Sparrow, (5 August 2022) The Conversation.
  • [11] Queensland Government Statistician鈥檚 Office, , Census 2021 (2022) The State of Queensland (Queensland Treasury).
  • [12] Andrew Markus, Mapping Social Cohesion (Scanlon Foundation Report, 2021) 11.
  • [13] Women of Colour Australia, Workplace Survey Report 2020-21 (Report, 2021) 5.

 

Visual representation of facts from the Cultural and Racial Diversity Fact Sheet. The contents of the facts depicted in these graphics are shared on this page in text format. Visual representation of facts from the Cultural and Racial Diversity Fact Sheet. The contents of the facts depicted in these graphics are shared on this page in text format.

 

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